By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

The phenomenon of multimodality has, as Jewitt observes, generated interest"across many disciplines…against the backdrop of considerable socialchange." Contemporary societies are grappling with the social implicationsof the rapid increase in sophistication and range of multimodal practices,particularly within interactive digital media, so that the study ofmultimodality also becomes essential within an increasing range ofpractical domains. As a result of this increasing interest inmultimodality, scholars, teachers and practitioners are on the one handuncovering many different issues arising from its study, such as those oftheory and methodology, while also exploring multimodality within anincreasing range of domains.

Such an increase and range of interest in multimodality heralds theemergence of a distinct multimodal studies field: as both the mapping of adomain of enquiry, and as the site of the development of theories,descriptions and methodologies specific to and adapted for the study ofmultimodality. The present volume presents a range of works by animpressive international roster of contributors who both explore issuesarising from the study of multimodality and explore the scope of thisemerging field within specific domains of multimodal phenomena.Contributors aim to show that each individual work and works in generalwithin multimodal studies represent a dialectic or complementarity betweenthe exploration of issues of general significance to multimodal studies andthe exploration of specific domains of multimodality; while characterizingspecific works as tending to some degree towards one or other of these mainareas of focus. Such a characterization is seen as part of a move towardsthe identification and thus development of a distinct field of multimodalstudies.